Somone told me.

My other cousin who has been reefing for 5 years told me either to have a deep sand bed of 3 1/2-4 inches or barely having 1 at all. Is this true? He said having the thick sand bed helps. He is also bringing me a bag of his sand (3 years old) to help with my startup. When he come down we are turning a 10 gallon I have into refugium, setting up a sump, and getting prtoein skimmer. I want all this hidden underneath the tank, so what all should I start buying for when he arrives so that we can get right on this project?

 

can you take pictures of your project? I would like to learn how to DIY sump with 10 gallons works...............pictures will me :^:

 

Yeah for sure, but for now im only running an emperor 400 until the tank has cycled. But i also need to know if having a 4 in florida crushed coral bed is ok??? We started on my cousins today and so far its a white cloud tank lol.

Also should we wait until the cloud is gone before we mix in the salt???

 

Take this response not a a negative but a warning- I personally back in the 80's used the deep substrate bed system within the tank. At that time the recommendations by many were to have a 1" area of water "dead space" at the bottom, with 1" of course substrate (crushed coral) with 2" of sand on top- the bottom dead space was accomplished by using 1" thick acryllic blocks to suspend an egg crate open fluor. light panel- on top of the panel to prevent the sustrate from falling through was a layer of fiberglass screen door mesh which was also put between the course and sand layer.

WARNING- after much success for over 5 years with this system, one morning everthing was lost and the water was like soup. Rationale- the deep substrate bed acts like a sponge for waste and contaminents in the tank. If you do use a deep substrate system, make sure you have many inverts / sand sifters that will turn over the sand as much as possible.

Since the late 80's to now, I have adopted the exact converse of a deep sand bed-

All live rock is suspended on smaller pieces of rock that sit directly on top of the glass bottom of the tank- I only put live sand 1" deep along the front viewing areas and not across the entire bottom of the tank- in a 100Gal tank only use 10lbs. of sand.

The only filtration that is used is the sponges in the overflow and bio balls in the chamber of the trickle filter and filter cloth at the opening from the sump to the pump.

A must for this type of open system is the best protein skimmer that you can afford along with a UV sterilizer.

View photos of 175 and 92 on site to see how successful this system has been!

Chris